There was a time a few years ago when Earnhardt Jr. wouldn’t put Jeffrey in one of his cars.

“I was a little disappointed in his focus,” Earnhardt Jr. said last week at Kansas Speedway. “He was young and didn’t want to put in the dedication and the focus.

“He was wanting to chase girls and be off goofing around fishing.”

If that sounds a little harsh, it is.

“That’s pretty accurate right there,” Jeffrey said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I was definitely just being a dumb kid growing up and didn’t take the best opportunities I had seriously.

“I don’t regret it because it’s made me the person I am today and made me learn from it and made me appreciate opportunities like this a lot more.”

The son of Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s oldest son, Kerry, Jeffrey once drove in the K&N Series for the Dale Earnhardt Inc. team his grandfather founded but wasn’t all that impressive.

He finished fifth in the East Series standings in 2007 but slipped to 15th in 2008 and was pulled from the car for the final two races.

Jeffrey has competed in 25 Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series races since 2009 with one top-10 finish — a seventh in the season-opening truck race at Daytona in 2011.

He spent last year training for a mixed martial arts fight and he competed in just six Nationwide races. He said it was that MMA training — four hours a day, seven days a week — that proved something to himself and a lot of people as he won his only fight.

“That was a huge eye-opener to show how much dedication it takes to actually be successful at something,” Jeffrey said. “With the MMA, I trained for two months and decided to step in the cage.

“If you ask me, it was pretty stupid. But it also helped me find out how hard I am willing to push to be successful at something. It’s just carried over to everything that I’ve done lately in life and it’s made me a much better person and helped me fuel my drive to accomplish my goals.”

His uncle noticed a difference.

“His dedication to his MMA training and seeing how much he put himself through and how much physically he had to go through really just to do a one-off match (impressed me),” Earnhardt Jr. said. “He wasn’t really serious about fighting. He was just trying to get in good shape.”

That wasn’t the only thing that got Earnhardt Jr.’s attention. Jeffrey competed in five of the first six races for Go Green Racing in the Nationwide Series this year and while the results haven’t been great (a best of 20th at Phoenix), his uncle noticed a difference in his nephew.

“They go to Vegas after Phoenix and they unloaded the car in the parking lot and they rebuilt the car … in a day,” Earnhardt Jr. said.

“He’s in there doing it. He’s part of it. That’s what you want to see. That kind of dedication really is impressive.”

That work ethic earned Jeffrey this one chance at JR Motorsports. There are no guarantees for future races. The Richmond event was unsold for the team’s No. 5 car, so the team called Jeffrey to fill the seat and eventually CorvetteParts.net jumped on board to sponsor him.

Jeffrey still has at least a few more races in the Go Green car but nothing set for much of 2013.

The pressure for Jeffrey will be no different than what he has had the last few years.

“Growing up racing with the last name Earnhardt, there’s always been pressure,” Jeffrey said. “Everyone is always expecting you to win just because (of) your last name.

“I’ve always known that’s not the case. I’ve got to learn just like everyone else and that’s helped me not letting pressure get to me so bad with this deal.”

Earnhardt Jr. said he hopes this one chance leads to more opportunities for Jeffrey, whether with JR Motorsports or another team.

“I feel like the pressure is on me to give him that kind of an opportunity,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “He is a real good guy. He’s really matured a lot and I’m just proud of the person he has become.

“These types of opportunities lend themselves to guys who sort of come into their own, and I think as a person he has done that.”

Jeffrey is back focused on racing and not the MMA — “I’d much rather be racing than stepping in a cage and get beat up,” he said — and he already has spent time with JRM teammate Regan Smith talking about the best way to get around Richmond.

“I’ve never really asked for the opportunity — I kind of saw it if they feel like I deserve it, they’ll offer it to me,” Jeffrey said. “I was always told that I had things handed to me when I had my deal at DEI.

“During the past few years, I’ve kind of went out on my own and worked hard to find sponsors and race deals and I wanted to feel like I really earned it (rather) than I got handed it.”